This skill was indeed costly.

If he was to use his usual methods instead...

At the moment, his best damage-dealing skill was Shadow Assassin, which dealt 400% physical damage with an additional 400% dark elemental damage.

Since it was C-Rank, it would scale with the C-Rank cap of his strength stat - that being 79.

In terms of raw damage, that was 790.

Multiply by 10 from Will of the Absolute and that's 7,900.

Then multiply by 4 from Aura and that's 31,600.

Then multiply by 4 from Shadow Assassin and you get 126,400 damage.

He didn't calculate the other 4x from dark elemental damage as it didn't seem to stack while the elemental boost from the Heavenly Demonic Sword Art was active. Although the skill had evolved into Will of the Absolute, he didn't think this part had changed.

Even so, the damage was still insane.

His raw damage that didn't scale with Shadow Assassin was 1,260. Multiply by 10 from Will of the Absolute and that's 12,600. Then by 4 from Aura and that's 50,400.

When he added it all together, that was 176,800 total damage.

The maximum HP for an SSS-Rank was about 250,000. That meant he needed about 3 strikes like that to take one down - and that was accounting for shields, regeneration, defensive skills, and all that.

To make a single such strike would cost: Will of the Absolute was free, Aura was 320 mana - this single activation would last half a minute, but he decided to count it for each of the strikes - and Shadow Assassin was worth 90 mana.

That's 410 mana per strike.

Multiply by 3 and you get 1,230 mana. Way less than when using the Instant Death skill.

It would cost him just a little under 15,000 mana to kill ten SSS-Ranks himself, while it would cost him over 250,000 using the SSS-Rank skill.

That being said, this wasn't exactly a fair comparison as it ignored a lot of things.

One of them being that he wouldn't always have a clean shot at the SSS-Rank while using his other skills. They had far superior stats to him. In fact, it would be a surprise if he could even land a solid hit.

So the price for the Instant Death skill - which was a guaranteed kill - didn't look too bad when looking at it from this perspective.

He also had a few ideas on how he could make it even better.

The second feature of the Optimize card was reducing mana cost. If he could reduce the mana cost of activating the skill with a few Optimize cards, it should be able to reach a level where it wasn't all that bad compared to the other methods.

…

With that, Cipher considered the matter settled.

He just needed to accumulate large amounts of mana by sleeping as much as he could. And when the time inevitably came for him to make a move, he would kill low level demons and use the gained points to roll for Optimizes.

He would then hit the skill with maybe five of them, reducing the cost to about 30% mana. That would be around 50,000 qi for all nine demon lords.

He nodded. This indeed sounded reasonable.

He then turned back to his cards again.

He had a Fork and a Merge. He was saving the Merge for upgrading the Mana Recovery skill. In fact, he needed another Merge. Another Fork too, since he had spent one for the Instant Death skill.

That being said, he felt there was no need to save them. When he would eventually be rerolling the shop again while hunting for other cards, he would be in combat and thus wouldn't benefit from Mana Recovery until the war was over.

Now the question was - how to use them since he wouldn't be saving them?

His thoughts instantly went to forking Resurrection and committing another skill. But he remembered he was all out of Commit cards.

The Instant Death skill was quite good. He needed to stock up on Commits and Forks to see if he could get more similar skills.

As for using the Fork right now, he decided to fork Resurrection and export it to Lyra.

Lyra was currently a different person but also his skill at the same time. He could see her status through Appraisal, which was different from the skill description, so she could be considered like a summon. She even had her own skills.

That meant he could export the Resurrection skill to her.

This would solve his greatest issue at the moment. Death.

With her having that, he wouldn't have to worry about needing her to kill monsters to level up so he could survive. She could just use the skill and bring him back.

Just as he was about to fork, he remembered something.

He also needed the Fork card to take care of Dante's issue.

Well, technically, he didn't need it. He just needed to Import the Berserker skill, then Patch it, and Export it back to him.

But he wanted to Patch and then Fork before exporting so he could keep a copy for his own use. It was a sacrifice-type skill, so after Patch it would be totally free.

But after some thought, he made his decision.

He decided to go with the Resurrection fork.

Not only was it the most beneficial to him overall, but he also wouldn't be meeting Dante soon. He had heard from the Moonlight Maiden that the other sects were also preparing for the war, so they would probably meet on the frontlines.

When they met on the frontlines, he should have killed a few demons and rolled for more cards. There should be no problem by then.

He just hoped he and the others would get there safely.

He clicked use and forked the Resurrection skill again.

…

In the outside world, his eyes fluttered open.

"You're already awake?" Lyra asked, noticing movement.

"Yeah. I need to give you something," he said, gesturing for her hand.

She extended her hand toward him. He took it gently and exported the skill to her.

"This is..." Her eyes widened slightly as she felt the skill integrate into her being.

He smiled.

"Next time, you don't have to do all those things that are beneath you. You can just use this," he said with a warm smile.

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